User:Bill

Bill lives in Melbourne Australia and works as a Software Engineer for a bio-medical company. At home he likes to tinker with Linux, electronics, and spends way too much time doing Medieval Stuff with the SCA.

MythTV for my brother

MythTV Setup with LCD TV

• Hardware
  • Twinhan MiniTer DVT PCI DVB Card
  • Twinhan MiniTer DVT PCI DVB Card
  • ASUS K8V-X Motherboard
  • AMD 754 Sempron 3000+ CPU
  • ASUS 5200 AGP Graphics with TV-out
  • Seagate HDD 8M IDE 250GB
  • Antec Overture II Case
  • RAM 512GB Generic
  • Pioneer 109 Black DVD-WR x16
  • Microsoft MCE Remote Control
  • MSI Wireless54G PCI Card
• Total Cost is around AU$1000
• Partitioned with LVM so that extra disks are easy to add
• Running Debian Sarge (would use Ubuntu next time)

Specific Details from /etc/X11/XF86Config-4

• Using the binary driver from NVIDIA in an attempt to utilise XvMC acceleration

Section "Device"
       Identifier      "NVIDIA Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200]"
       Driver          "nvidia"
       Option          "NoLogo" "True"
       Option          "RenderAccel" "True"
       Option          "XvmcUsesTextures" "false"
EndSection

• Use the Monitor refresh rates as specified in the Samsung LCD TV User Manual

Section "Monitor"
       Identifier      "Generic Monitor"
       HorizSync       31-60
       VertRefresh     50-75
EndSection

• The Samsung LCD TV User Manual specifies the VGA resolution as 1280x?? so we use a customised Modes line.

Section "Screen"
       Identifier      "Default Screen"
       Device          "NVIDIA Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200]"
       Monitor         "Generic Monitor"
       DefaultDepth    24
      SubSection "Display"
               Depth           24
               Modes           "1280" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
       EndSubSection
EndSection

• This section makes sure that XWindows can start up even if there is no mouse or keyboard connected, which is really important for a true Set Top Box.

Section "ServerFlags"
       Option "AllowKeyboardOpenFail" "true"
       Option "AllowMouseOpenFail" "true"
EndSection

XWindows startup script for Frontend from /home/mythtv/.xinitrc file

• Fix the Blue Line that is shown on the screen using xvattr command
• Turn off the auto screen blanking using xset
• Start the FVWM window manager, myth transcode daemon, and the frontend

xvattr -a XV_COLORKEY -v 66048
/usr/bin/X11/xset s noblank
/usr/bin/X11/xset s off
/usr/bin/X11/xset dpms off
/usr/bin/fvwm&
/usr/bin/mtd -d &
/usr/bin/mythfrontend --logfile /var/log/mythtv/mythfrontend.log

MythTV for myself

• Hardware
  • Twinhan MiniTer DVT PCI DVB Card (x2)
  • Excel Bttv TV Capture Card (Generic Analog)
  • Homebuilt Intel Desktop PC
• Running Debian Sid as main desktop computer

Specific Configuration Required

• The Bttv module configuration had to be specified because of the stupid Generic Analog capture card doesn't have a PCI EEPROM which means it can't be auto recognised and configured. Luckily you can specify multiple [Bttv]] card types as module options, like so:

/etc/modprobe.d/bttv

 options bttv radio=0,0,1 pll=0,0,1 card=113,113,0x25 tuner=4,4,5

The order of the card paramters is probably the PCI device order, and I have 2 TwinHan cards (Card ID 113 or 0x71) followed by the Generic card (Card ID 37 or 0x25), hense the comma seperated list of card parameters. I discovered the required order by inspecting dmesg with all the cards in the system.

MythTV XBox Frontend

• Hardware
  • XBox v1.6 (bought 2005)
  • Homebrew modchip (AU$20) from Jaycar
• Software
  • XBox Media Center XBMC
  • Xebian Linux